In Tribute: The Best of James Horner

In honor of James Horner, we list some of his best works.

You could say it’s taken us a little while to post this
article because, like many film fans around the world, we at The Movie Sleuth
are still getting over the shock of losing one of cinema’s most gifted
composers. James Horner may not have been a household name along with the many
directors whose films he has elevated with his body of work, but his music is
iconic and eternal. He has composed numerous cues so recognizable that you
can’t help but pick them out with a knowing smile when one graces a new theatrical
trailer, getting us stoked for a film that likely won’t live up to the majesty
of the music used to promote it. His death means a significant loss, not just
to film, but to music as a whole. Here are some of our favorite scores from the
late, great James Horner. Rest in peace, maestro.

Growing up with Star
Trek: The Next Generation on television, it’s easy to pick out the “Star Trek theme” when it blares. Jerry
Goldsmith’s singular cue is one of the best and most recognizable in cinema.
But if you ask fans of the “Trek Trilogy,” they think of another piece of
music. In 1982, climbing out from the primordial cheese of Roger Corman shlock,
James Horner was selected by Nicholas Meyer to create a new kind of Star Trek theme. This marked the first
of two occasions when Horner would pick up the baton from Goldsmith in a
science fiction franchise. It’s hard to say who did it better, but with two
sequential titles in a series brought back from the brink of its own self
destruction, Horner found many of the defining coins of his style, and became
an integral cog in the ever-winding clock of Star Trek history. The four-note villain motif that would become a
trademark of a long and industrious career (most notably present in Enemy at the Gates) took root in Surprise Attack, and would forever be
known as “Khan’s Theme” in the minds of Trek
fans the world over. You could say it’s i-KHAAAAAAN-ic. His use of string bass,
percussion, and a seamless integration of the usually bombastic “Blaster Beam”
— an instrument made famous as the “VGer sound” in the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture (played by
smashing an artillery shell on what looks like a massive guitar-string panel) —
may not be as majestic and hypnotic as Goldsmith’s score, but as one of several
themes in this one-two knockout punch, it’s a phenomenal example of how to use
music to build and sustain tension. An example that Horner would continue to
build on and truly show his gifts in Search
for Spock. While recognized as the low point of the “Trek Trilogy,” this
was certainly no fault of Horner’s, whose ambition to top himself elevated an
otherwise standard Trek offering (he
wouldn’t return to score The Voyage Home
due to scheduling conflicts with Aliens).
Goldsmith’s original score finds its spiritual sibling right from the opening
cue, as we re-experience the death of Spock, and descend upon the Genesis
planet. With Horner’s beautifully orchestrated brass section and swooping
strings, it’s a score that touches something elemental within us, rouses our
sense of wonder, and sparks our thirst for adventure.

Brainstorm
(1983)

Among the earliest James Horner scores to garner both
recognition and the criticism that he often worked preexisting music into his
own scores was his work on the ill-fated Douglas Trumbull science fiction
feature Brainstorm with Christopher
Walken and the late Natalie Wood. Known as one of the last 70mm films to be
widely released as well as the troubled final film of Natalie Wood, Brainstorm represents one of the
earliest mainstream efforts by the young composer. From its opening cue of a
near silent angelic chorus building up into a full blown orchestral assault of
strings, cymbals and electronic sounds, Brainstorm
achieves a sense of wonder and implacable fear purely from the score alone.
Arguably one of Horner’s loveliest compositions which still remains largely
unheard in his canon, Michael’s Gift to
Karen, presents a kind of love letter of pianos, violins and a heavenly
choir suggesting the lost joy in Michael and Karen’s relationship. As with the
film’s abrupt tonal shifts from wonder to terror, Horner provides early
precursors to his nail biting work in Aliens
with tracks like Lillian’s Heart Attack
and Race for Time, amplifying the
tension and excitement. It’s a little bombastic in parts but gives the film the
air of a thriller all the same. Lastly for just a few moments over the end
credits, Horner even manages to work in the preamble of medieval English
composer Thomas Tallis’ 1570 piece Spem
in Alium, a move that works beautifully but would also provide detractors
with the ammunition they needed to assail the composer’s work over the years
for being “unoriginal”. Whatever your stance on Horner’s mixture of classical
preexisting music and his own compositions may be, Horner proved you can meld
the two together beautifully and Brainstorm
is indicative of an artist just starting to come into his own.

Commando
(1985)

Now here’s an unusual offering you wouldn’t expect from
James Horner: The over-the-top Arnold Schwarzenegger action thriller Commando. Not just for it being part of
Horner’s discography, but in particular how it sounds in relation to the man’s
other scores. Opening on a cue of synthesizers, tropical steel drums and a
recurring saxophone, Commando is the
least likely military-oriented action soundtrack you would expect to hear. In a
way, the score actually provides the goofball 80s action classic with a comical
backdrop, allowing viewers an arm’s-length distance from the cheesy material.
While some elements of Horner’s strings are present in certain scenes, it’s
predominantly the aforementioned instruments that make up the strangely
incongruent score. Some synthesized pieces intended to evoke dread do evoke an
ongoing trademark of Horner’s score that would find itself in both Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Aliens: tapping the bow of a violin
across the strings, making a percussive plucking sound. While Jerry Goldsmith
made frequent use of this technique in Alien,
it would become commonplace in James Horner’s work over the years. Commando isn’t necessarily the greatest
starting point to examine the composer’s distinguished career but it is
certainly unlike anything else he’s written before. For once, the high camp of
the film and its soundscape are in perfect union thanks to an 80s action score
that, save for a final showdown with atonal strings notifying the viewer they
should be scared instead of chuckling, takes the proceedings even less
seriously than we do.

Aliens
(1986)

The first score by James Horner to earn an Academy Award
nomination in 1986, Aliens is both
timelessly iconic in the nerve-wracking action thriller genre as well as a
drawing inspiration from Jerry Goldsmith’s score to Alien and even making room for Aram Khachaturian’s Gayane Ballet Suite used previously in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Much like the
score itself, it was produced overnight at a frantic pace, writing and editing
up to the very last minute just days before the premiere. Much like Alien, Horner’s score was rearranged
chronologically in the editing process, including the swapping of some cues
with that of Goldsmith’s when those Horner provided weren’t up to director
James Cameron’s standards. From the onset, we hear the distant otherworldly hum
opening the credits before a subtle chorus and army snare drum beats indicate Aliens as a sort of military science
fiction hybrid. As the film progresses from Lt. Ellen Ripley’s journey from
medical base to military drop ship, the film maintains its percussive notes
leading towards a full blown percussion only drill when the Colonial Marines
and dropship prepare to enter the xenomorph’s planetary atmosphere. Near the
final showdown between Ripley and an alien queen, an iconic piece of music in
Horner’s canon emerged which found itself reused time and time again in
theatrical trailers, including Alien 3. It’s
a combination of white knuckle tension full of heavy orchestral strings,
cymbals and horns achieving a climax of sound that is equal parts exciting and
utterly terrifying. Despite the success of both Aliens and Horner’s unforgettable soundtrack, Horner expressed
dissatisfaction with the score complaining it was incomplete given the time
crunch and the re-editing of his score as written out of sequence with the
finished film. In Horner’s canon, it
also has a tendency to be overshadowed by Goldsmith’s influences but there’s
just enough of Horner’s own sharp edge in the tense action compositions it
manages as a score to set itself apart from the pack.

An
American Tail (1986)

Although Horner was mostly garnering attention for his Academy
Award nominated score for Aliens, the
man also began an ongoing working relationship with ex-Disney animator Don
Bluth when he provided the score to what is essentially both Steven Spielberg
and Horner’s first foray into animation, An
American Tail. The story of a family of Russian mice immigrating to the
United States before being split apart on the way by a violent storm, An American Tail established Fievel
Mouskewitz as one of the earliest heroes of Don Bluth’s animation as well as
the first animated character to come from Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment.
This was one of the first official musicals in Horner’s canon, providing both
an original score and a series of song and dance numbers for the cast of
cartoon mice and cats to burst into. Most of all though, it provided Horner
with a unique opportunity and even greater exposure than his Aliens score did when he composed the
original song Somewhere Out There
with Linda Ronstadt. Serving as a precursor to Horner’s eventual work with
Celine Dion for James Cameron’s Titanic,
the song won a Grammy and became one of the most popular songs written for an
animated film in decades, garnering widespread radio play and sales of the
soundtrack as well as singles of the song. While sporting Horner’s usual fare of
white knuckle excitement and tension, it also provided a new sentimental side
to his music not heard before and was among his earliest mainstream successes
where people didn’t just listen to his score with the movie.

Glory
(1989)

James Horner’s achingly beautiful and heartfelt score for
the 1989 Civil War drama Glory was
both the first Horner soundtrack I had heard in a film and the first work of
his I owned a personal copy of. Aided by
a choral requiem supplanted by the Boys Choir of Harlem, Horner’s score informs
the profoundly moving historical drama of the 54th Regiment of
Massachusetts, the first Union Army during the Civil War comprised entirely of
African American men. Based off the letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw
(played by Matthew Broderick) and featuring an Academy Award-winning
performance by Denzel Washington, Glory
may well be the definitive Civil War film. Under two hours, it captures the
essence of what the divide between the North and South was about more directly
and succinctly than far denser and expansive procedurals such as Gettysburg or Gods and Generals. From the onset, Horner’s score achieves a rare
emotional power over a viewer’s heartstrings, particularly over the opening
theme to its Carl Orff inspired grand finale Charging Fort Wagner. As with his prior works, Horner’s stood
accused of plagiarizing by working samples of preexisting works into his own
compositions and with Glory the man
pretty clearly lifted from Orff’s Carmina
Burana in the last act. That said, Horner follows it up over the closing
credits with undoubtedly my favorite composition of his to date. Working the
film’s recurring theme into a crescendo of mournful vocals, battalion snare
drums and thundering bell chimes, this is one of those rare pieces of music
with the power to make listeners cry. So strong was the track it found itself
repurposed into trailers for films such as Ron Howard’s Backdraft. With the release of Glory
in theaters, the film was a critical and commercial success and represented
Horner’s first mainstream success on home media with sales of the soundtrack
through the roof. Years later in the short lived battle between DVD-Audio and
Sony’s Super Audio CD format, the score was reissued in remastered 5.1 surround
sound, a testament to the soundtrack’s lasting commercial viability and
emotional resonance within listeners. In Horner’s canon, this was his first
masterpiece.

Apollo
13 (1995)

Ron Howard’s biopic of NASA’s ill-fated Apollo 13 mission is one of the great space exploration thrillers
of our generation. A nerve-wracking tale of survival and milestone in cinema
history for being among the very first Hollywood films to shoot actual zero
gravity sequences thanks to a specialized airplane the film captures the
awesome scope, terror and beauty of deep space in one fell swoop. From the nail
biting terror of survival against unthinkable odds to the powerful emotional
perspective of loved ones fearing for the lives of the men on the doomed lunar
mission, Apollo 13 pays incredible
attention to historical detail and still manages to make all the complexity of
the mission understandable to audiences. No doubt aiding to the mixture of
wonderment and white knuckle tension is James Horner’s score for the film, one
which garnered him another Academy Award nomination as well as commercial
success on home media sales. Beginning on an awesome yet foreboding note of
heavy bass, snare drums and a patriotic trumpet by Tim Morrison, Apollo 13 captures the national glory of
the Apollo 11 mission with Neil Armstrong and a certain yearning from its hero
Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), the man who would commandeer the Apollo 13 mission.
True to form, Horner’s ability to strike stark terror in the hearts of
listeners is played to full effect here, notably in a terrifying nightmare
sequence where Lovell’s wife (played by Kathleen Quinlan) imagines the worst
case scenario. Aiding to the terror are atonal strings, synthesizers and sharp
piano keys during fight or flight moments of sheer adrenaline. As with Glory, the choir provides an awesome
scope to the proceedings, particularly during the launch sequence which manages
to achieve a sense of tear-jerking awe not felt since the early days of Steven
Spielberg. The final closing track with vocalist Annie Lennox singing the main
theme song against thundering percussion leaves viewers with a sense of
anticipation and excitement, gratified it’s over but still shaken by how scary
the ride was.

Braveheart
(1995)

How did James Horner not win the Oscar for Best Original
Score for Braveheart? Could it be
because he was nominated against himself for scoring Apollo 13? Maybe. He lost to Luis Bacalov, who scored Il Postino (The Postman). Now, if you ask anyone to tell you what the score
sounded like to The Postman, they’ll
probably think you’re talking about the Kevin Costner piece of shit, and
everything about that movie needs to perish in a car fire. The point is:
Hindsight is 20-20, it is 20 years later, and Horner should’ve had this one in
the bag. If Steven Soderbergh can win Best Director nominated against himself
for directing one great film and a mediocre one, surely James Horner could’ve
won for scoring two great films that have great music. Both Apollo 13 and Braveheart have become part of the bedrock of American cinema
culture. Both have lines that are part of daily vernacular. However, despite
his terrific work on Apollo 13, it’s
James Horner’s score to Braveheart
that has transcended the last two decades. His flute softly caresses the air of
the film’s main theme with an underscore of strings so elegant and emotional,
it’s arguably more iconic than Mel Gibson’s monolithic war cry. And that right
there shows you how great all of the work here is: I don’t even have to tell
you which one it is, but I will say this to the stupid airplane that ended
Horner’s time on this earth. You can take his life, but you’ll never take his
music. Braveheart remains one of the singular achievements of film composition
in the 1990s.

Titanic
(1997)

This score needs no introduction. It’s one of the most
grandiose and sprawling scores ever composed, and for one of the most grandiose
and sprawling films ever made. Yet it’s probably due to the film’s immense
size, popularity, and subsequent bashing, that it does seem to require
defending. Everything as popular as Titanic
eventually develops an undercurrent of hatred that fights its way to the
surface, whereby it inevitably becomes fashionable to poke fun at it. Something
that makes this much money must be pandering to an audience, therefore we must
nitpick, and Titanic as a film (along
with most every screenplay by James Cameron) certainly does not stand up to
much nitpicking. Is Titanic the
greatest film ever made? Of course not, but as far as films made for teenage
girls, would you rather watch this or Twilight?
Game, set, match. All Celine Dion nonsense aside, James Horner’s sorrow and
action-filled score for Titanic
marked his reunion with Cameron after the postproduction nightmare of Aliens made them part on bad terms. It
was after seeing Braveheart that
Cameron decided he needed to bury the hatchet with Horner so that he could
recruit the maestro for his $200 million epic tragedy. This was the smartest
move Cameron could have made. Not only did Horner win two Oscars for his work,
but his music all but defines the word “epic.” All of Horner’s ambition, his
love affair with bagpipes that began in Wrath
of Khan, and his trademark percussion style come to full fruition in Titanic. He perfectly integrates
synthesizers with his orchestra for Southampton
(the true theme of Titanic, the boat), creating a score that has more than
withstood the test of time, even if all of us got more than a little sick of My Heart Will Go On playing on the radio
every six minutes. But listen to the cue A
Building Panic and try to think for a moment that it isn’t the work of a
master. I dare you.

The
Mask of Zorro (1998)

The real test of a talent is succeeding outside of one’s
comfort zone. When James Horner decided to assist Martin Campbell in
resurrecting the long-dead Zorro
franchise, he wasn’t just going outside of his comfort zone: He was strapping
himself to a rocket aimed deep in foreign territory. We can say a lot of things
about Horner’s music; we can call it “beautiful” or “grand” or even
“Corman-tastic.” One thing we couldn’t call it was “Mexican.” Anyone who has
casually listened to Mexican music or even showed a passing interest in the
film scores of Robert Rodriguez will notice a decisive reliance on
instrumentation that James Horner simply doesn’t use on the regular: Human
hands, feet, and guitars. From the opening sequence in the Plaza of Execution,
Horner says “bring it on.” If your idea of a wet dream for the ears is a
street-side mariachi band meets Stomp, this is the soundtrack for you. Consider
the “Fencing Lesson” scene with Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones,
where Horner primarily orchestrates using clapping, tap dancing, and mariachi
guitars. Not only is this one of the best music cues in The Mask of Zorro, but it’s one of the best extended foreplay
sequences ever filmed. While we still get the faithful standbys of strings and
brass, Horner’s usually expansive compositions go for a more human touch, and
in a late ‘90s summer blockbuster that struck a terrific balance between epic
and intimate. The one misfire was his attempt to recapture lightning in a
bottle with I Want To Spend My Lifetime
Loving You. While the melody of this song is terrific within Horner’s main
score, the decision to put lyrics to it and pass it off to Marc Anthony and
Tiny Arena was a clear stab at trying to win another Celine Dion-type hit. It
didn’t work, but it’s just about the only thing here that doesn’t.